Chaos Monastery: Is respectful, cross-cultural magic possible?
This is an open question to all my followers and … well, everyone else.
I am struggling with a moral aspect of chaos magic – one that has not been mentioned in any literature I’ve come across or by any chaos magician I have personally met. I have been pondering this matter for a while now and…
You seem to imply, especially in your answer to drunken-rambling that this is actually not possible. I think that a lot depends on the attitude of the magician, and that respectfully borrowing is a thing, “killing the inventors of the technology, mocking them and labelling as savage, oppressing the native users of the technology” is another and there is a large spectrum of options between the two. Moreover, I don’t think there is something like a culture – magical or mundane – which has never borrowed something from other places and peoples, popping fully formed like Athena out of Zeus’s head. Santeria, for example, is a syncretic religion of West African and Caribbean origin influenced by Roman Catholic Christianity (wikipedia). Christianity itself borrowed from dozens of different sources, and this can be said of every religion, magical system or philosophy in the world.
I think magic should be free from fences and enclosures. If one is Russian or Italian or Maori and wants to work with Santeria, Goetia or whatever, that’s fine. The main point is if he is a good person or an asshole.
So far, in this thread, I am merely implying, that it is not up to us ( the magicians / the cultural receivers ) to say whether such borrowing is right or wrong. Only the natives, those who live a culture, its traditions and care for its history and meaning, can say if what we are doing (or trying to do) is right or wrong. And our position is that we should gratefully accept and act upon their opinions if they care to share them with us.
Sadly, your example is exactly what caused this question in the first place – just a short glance at the history of Santeria on wikipedia suggests, that this religion was created as a result of slavery and suffering of people, whose belief or even the sole right to freedom were crushed by those who thought they knew better. The circumstances were not created by them, which is completely different from a free, white magician sitting in their cozy apartment in Manhattan.
And with Christianity – well the argument that “they did it so it’s ok to do that” is not sufficient to me, as I personally disagree with Christian churches’ political/cultural doctrines.
Luckily, as a society, we are now more conscious and knowledgeable than we were during the formation of these religions, systems and philosophies you are mentioning. And we can take far more into consideration when approaching such delicate matters. Perhaps as a part of the global consciousness we are so happy to partake in (thank you tumblr), we can learn to consider the opinions that we were so happy to disregard in the past?
I like the idea of having an open dialogue about these things. If you do happen to talk with native practitioners of faiths with magical traditions, make sure you share that with others.
And remember, no faith is monolithic. One person’s opinion on the matter is valid, but not a seal of approval/disapproval.